


As The Fairytales Say

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Coda, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Multi, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:01:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: Codas to various other fics, originally posted on tumblr but now collected here. Each chapter will state which fic it's a coda for and if it's smut.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Wyatt Logan/Lucy Preston
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	1. Compared to What

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/185253174498/since-youre-feeling-sappy-today-might-i-wonder

They were spies, which meant free time wasn’t really a thing that existed.

But they made do with what they could.

Flynn would play chess, with Wyatt, with Lucy, with Rufus, with himself. Lucy read history books, still wanting that degree at some point. Mason got her a month’s leave after Istanbul and she took Wyatt and Flynn to the States and finally met Amy. She’d find a local mechanic’s shop, wherever they were, and she’d help fix up cars.

Wyatt would find a local shooting range, or would visit an art museum, dragging the other two with him and whispering to them about the art. One time he and Flynn got caught making out in the east wing and were kicked out by security.

Sometimes, though, they just liked to stay in bed.

Lucy woke up draped over Wyatt, smelling coffee, and turned her head to see Flynn sitting up with a room service tray balance on his lap, reading the newspaper. He looked over at her, smiling softly, and her heart ached.

“ _Dobro jutro, moja ljubav,_ ” he murmured.

Lucy reached up, pawing for coffee. “Back at you.”

She wasn’t at her most articulate in the mornings.

Flynn passed her coffee and she sat up, sipping slowly, as Wyatt rolled over and she helped to settle his head in her lap, idly stroking his hair. Wyatt was even less of a morning person than she was.

Once her morning breath was replaced with coffee, she leaned over and kissed Flynn, slow and sweet. He hummed, brushing his nose against hers. “Thank you for the coffee.”

“Small price to pay if it means I wake up to you every morning.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she shot back, blushing. How someone who was once known as the USSR’s most effective killing machine could be so soft and damn romantic, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to tell him to stop.

Flynn just smiled at her, knowing she didn’t mean it. A few times he had thought that, and she’d had to do a lot of backtracking. They all had their own self esteem issues, their own fears, their own scars. But now—now Flynn understood that it was just Lucy’s own insecurity, telling her that nobody could possibly ever mean it when they said things like that to her.

Flynn and Wyatt had, of course, made it their mission to prove that they did mean it. Every single time.

Wyatt stirred slightly. “Wha…”

“Shhh, go back to sleep,” Lucy whispered. It was a day off. A rare, beautiful day off. He didn’t have to wake up if he didn’t want to.

Wyatt kissed her thigh and then settled back into slumber.

Lucy looked up at Flynn, leaning in and resting her head on his shoulder. “Kiss me?”

Flynn obliged her at once. He always did.

“We should go dancing later,” Lucy murmured, reading the paper over Flynn’s shoulder. “Dress up.”

“I’d like that.” Flynn shifted, putting his arm around her, which conveniently also meant he could run his hand through Wyatt’s hair with Lucy, their fingers entangling.

Someday they’d get out of this spy game. She’d finish getting her history degree, they’d settle somewhere near Amy, and they could do this every weekend if they wanted. They’d be able to stop looking over their shoulders.

But for now… it was best to enjoy these days while they could. The three of them, relaxing, safe, together.

Lucy held onto her boys and reflected that, given everything else—this wasn’t too bad of a life to lead.


	2. Thicker Than Water (Smut)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here on tumblr: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/188731106433/hey-babe-since-we-were-robbed-of

They were lying idly in bed when Lucy brought it up.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to bring it up sooner, it was just… Wyatt was a bit skittish about this kind of thing. When you had just come to accept that you were bi, and in love with two people at once, and also those two people were a vampire and a witch and that was still pretty illegal (although Lucy was working very hard on changing that and people seemed to be listening), naturally you could be a bit intimidated when it came to sexual stuff.

So she’d waited, and now they were all cuddling in bed, which was Wyatt’s favorite pastime, so it had seemed like the best chance to bring it up.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” Flynn noted, sounding a bit drowsy.

Thanks to feeding on them regularly, Flynn now had… he didn’t like to call it a psychic bond since he couldn’t read their thoughts, but it was more like an empath bond. He could sense their emotions, even over distances. It was helpful, and sort of evened things out between all of them, since as Lucy’s familiar, Wyatt and Lucy could sense when the other one was upset or in danger.

Wyatt, who had been dozing, opened his eyes to look at Lucy.

Lucy shrugged. “I just had a question for Wyatt.”

“What kind of question?” Flynn asked, as if he already knew the answer and wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to handle it or not.

Lucy drew on the magic in the air, running it over Flynn and Wyatt’s shoulders simultaneously. Wyatt looked more alert now, and she saw Flynn try (and fail) to hide a shudder. “Rufus told me about how you halfway transformed so you could carry him away from the bunker,” she told Wyatt. “So can you… only transform parts of yourself at one time?”

“Sure, if I concentrated enough.” Wyatt shrugged. “It helps if you two are there.”

Flynn was Wyatt’s strongest anchor, but Lucy helped too, especially as the witch to his familiar. She loved that, loved how they were all intertwined with each other in different ways like a Celtic knot, unceasing, never knowing where one began and the other ended.

“So could you… make just one part of yourself… wolfish?”

She was not into bestiality. She liked Wyatt human when she fucked him (and oh, had she fucked him). But she also liked to feel nice and stretched and full, and werewolves, she had heard, had this trait when they fucked…

Wyatt finally seemed to get where she was coming from, because he groaned and buried his face into a pillow. “You know that we don’t usually actually do that, right?” he asked, his voice muffled. “Like, that’s not a _thing_ , don’t listen to porn.”

“But it’s natural in wolves, so theoretically—”

“Not just theoretically, seriously, have you ever looked up ‘knotting’ on the supernatural porn sites?” Wyatt asked, tilting his head back up and blushing furiously. “Yes, okay, we _can_ do it but it’s not—it’s a thing that you _humans_ seem to like, God only knows why, doesn’t it hurt!?”

“Don’t look at me,” Flynn said dryly. “I’m not the one who likes getting his dick bitten during a blowjob.”

“I knew I would regret asking you to do that, I knew you would hold it over me, I knew it…”

“Well?” Lucy asked. “Can you or can’t you knot me?”

Wyatt groaned. “Yes, if you really want me to, I can.”

“I can make it worth your while,” Lucy promised. If Wyatt really didn’t want to do it, of course, he didn’t have to, but…

Wyatt narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you offering?”

Lucy intensified her magic, skating it over his body, wrapping it around his wrists and his throat and tightening it for a brief second.

Wyatt’s eyes went dark. He didn’t like ropes or chains of any kind. That made the wolf in him panic. But Lucy’s magic, he’d told her, was different. It was _her_ , just like when Flynn used his vampiric strength to hold Wyatt down while he fed on him.

“Okay,” Wyatt croaked, and oh yes, it was on.

Flynn rolled his eyes, but Lucy pulled him to her. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to feed on us while this is happening,” she whispered, right up against his lips.

Flynn nipped at her mouth, not enough to draw blood but enough to sting. “You’re a menace.”

“Of course I am. Didn’t they warn you about witches? Evil things that enslave men?”

“Evil? Never.” Flynn nudged her nose with his. “But yours? Yes. _Tijelo i duša_.”

Lucy still didn’t know a lot of Croatian, but she knew a pledge of love when she heard one, and she kissed him, slick and deep, letting him wrap her up in his arms for a crushing embrace before she wrenched herself away to take care of Wyatt.

Wyatt was watching them with dark, hooded eyes, his face flushed. Lucy flicked her magic and he yelped as he flipped over onto his back, panting in surprise. She grinned.

“Hands above your head,” she cooed.

Wyatt did as he was told and Lucy slid her magic up and around, twining across his body like invisible snakes, holding him in place. Wyatt whined, his cock swelling, and Lucy grinned wickedly. He really was _so_ easy to turn on.

Flynn wrapped an arm around her from behind, securing her against his back as he slid his other hand down between her legs. Cuddling naked had advantages like this. “He does look so pretty like this,” Flynn mused. “All helpless.”

“You’re both the worst,” Wyatt managed to choke out.

“Be a good puppy and watch,” Lucy replied, and then she gasped, her hips jerking as Flynn sank his fingers into her.

He didn’t bite her, not just yet. He knew how much she loved that, she and Wyatt both, and so he liked to hold out. Flynn always protested it was a lie but he was a massive tease when he wanted to be. They all were, all three of them incorrigible.

Lucy bit her lip, whining as Flynn rubbed against her clit. Bastard, how dare he know exactly how to make her melt.

“I’m ready,” she promised, gently shoving Flynn’s hand away and grabbing Wyatt’s cock. It felt like normal as she sank down on it, as she started to move, but then—then—

Wyatt groaned, his face screwing up in concentration, his body jerking, and a moment later Lucy cried out because it was shifting, _growing_ , fuck, swelling up at the base and she was clawing at Flynn’s arms as they held her, kept her steady. The knot stopped just shy of too much, and she shuddered to a stop, her and Wyatt both, gulping down air as they struggled for breath.

Flynn soothed them, petting Wyatt’s hair, kissing her neck, until she felt like she could move again, like she wasn’t going to rip herself in half if she so much as twitched. It was—it was a lot, but she could make it work, she _wanted_ to make it work, and she tightened her magic around Wyatt just to hear him moan for it.

“You ready?” Flynn asked, petting his hands across her stomach, her breasts, and Lucy nodded, tipping her head back.

The first sink of his fangs into her always hurt, just a bit, but that was smoothed away almost at once by the pure pleasure that coursed through her. She cried out, knowing that Flynn was sometimes a bit insecure, worried that he was hurting her, and that hearing her make noise like that helped to remind him that she had asked for this, that she liked this.

Lucy felt like she was stuck between two electrical circuits, between two pits of fire, and she moved without finesse, shoving herself down again and again onto Wyatt’s cock, shoving up into Flynn’s mouth, her magic sparking all through the air, around Wyatt, around Flynn even, until she felt like she was sinking into honey and she sagged against Flynn, overwhelmed.

Wyatt shuddered, still inside her, still needing to come, and Flynn gently moved around her, still holding her up, and bent down over Wyatt’s neck.

Wyatt made a desperate, greedy noise and then a sound like a sob as Flynn drank from him. Lucy could see that Flynn was hard, too, hard and close, and she redirected her magic, wrapping it around him, touching him even though she couldn’t get up the physical motor skills to do it just then. Flynn made a startled, pleased noise at the back of his throat, still drinking from Wyatt, and Wyatt let out a desperate moan before jerking and coming inside of her.

Oh _fuck._ Fuck, fuck, fuck. That was—that was a lot, okay, yeah, but she liked it, they were definitely doing this again, oh _fuck_.

Flynn pulled away from Wyatt, eyes black and dazed, and Lucy realized he’d come as well at some point.

Excellent.

She slumped down on top of Wyatt, releasing her magic, and she felt Wyatt shift back to being fully human so that he could slide out of her.

“Okay,” Wyatt croaked, sounding like he hadn’t had a glass of water in years. “Okay, I could get behind that.”

Flynn snorted and Lucy laughed, breathless and dizzy and feeling so, so good.


	3. Courage Always Rises (Smut)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/186199466028/maaaaaaaaaaaaaads-bats-eyelashes-i-am-still

The closet was quite small, at least if the parties concerned were two adult men, one of whom was over six feet, but they were making it work.

Wyatt hadn’t planned on anything when they’d hidden in here, despite the knee-buckling kiss from Flynn a few weeks ago when they’d last frequented the club. He had assumed that they would merely slowly die of boredom, or perhaps finally get around to discussing the matter of Lucy. There was something—quite a great deal, actually—going on that was leaving Wyatt extremely confused about who was with whom romantically in this odd triangle.

Flynn, on the other hand, had most definitely planned something.

Or so Wyatt assumed since Flynn had closed the door and immediately shoved Wyatt up against the wall to kiss him senseless.

Wyatt flailed for a moment, surprised and uncoordinated, but then got his hands on Flynn’s shoulders and oh, yes, that was all _much_ better. Flynn quickly shoved a thigh between Wyatt’s legs and oh, Lord, that was—yes, fuck yes, grinding his hips against that felt amazing. Flynn was a man of action despite the trappings of a gentleman and he was therefore all firm muscle, no give whatsoever. Wyatt was in serious danger of coming in his clothes against Flynn’s thigh just from messily rutting against it like this was his first roll in the hay.

“I’d fuck you properly if I could,” Flynn murmured, pulling his leg away and kissing along Wyatt’s jaw, leaving him whimpering and bereft, so close to the edge.

It felt like everything in him was reduced to hot, rapidly melting butter. He was gasping uselessly, like a fish on dry land, and Jesus Christ yes he wanted Flynn to fuck him ‘properly’.

Wyatt had been in the army and he’d been in denial but he certainly had not been deaf, he had heard things, he knew how it worked between two men. But he’d never actually done any of it, not until Flynn, and holy _shit_ he wanted Flynn to teach him, show him, everything.

Mmm. If Lucy was there too, that would be even better.

“Is that something you’d like?” Flynn asked, delicately kissing along Wyatt’s neck, like he was sampling him and trying to find the best spot to drive Wyatt wild. “Would you like me to fuck you? Get inside you, find all the places that made you scream, get you begging on my cock?”

Hooo lord. Wyatt didn’t know if Lucy had told Flynn that their favorite game in bed was _tie Wyatt up and make him beg_ but yes, yes please, he wanted that so very badly, it was making his vision blur.

Wyatt nodded, and Flynn hooked Wyatt’s chin with his finger, tilting his head back. “Words, Wyatt.”

“Yes. Yes I’d like that.”

“Pity we can’t do that here.” Flynn then bit down, harsh, right over Wyatt’s pulse point, and Wyatt jerked his hips wildly in response.

Flynn chuckled. “We’ll just have to make do.”

He worked to undo his trousers, and it took about ten seconds but Wyatt realized what was happening and got onboard with it, undoing his own, shoving annoying layers and fabric out of the way in time for Flynn to line up their leaking cocks and _thrust_.

Wyatt saw goddamn stars.

Flynn yanked at Wyatt’s thigh until it was hooked around his leg, and Wyatt got his hand between Flynn’s shoulder blades for leverage, and then it was just a matter of burying his face in Flynn’s neck so he didn’t moan too loudly as they thrust and slid together, slick and hard and dirty, Flynn’s hand squeezing tight tight _tight_ …

Wyatt keened, shuddering all over, caught between the unyielding wall and Flynn’s unyielding body, feeling trapped in the best kind of way as he arched and thrust mindlessly. Flynn chuckled roughly and all but slammed Wyatt back into the wall as he lost his own rhythm, jerking and swearing under his breath in a language Wyatt didn’t know before he, too, came.

They stood there together, panting, lips and noses and tongues idly brushing. After a few moments, Flynn reached for a rag–and this, Wyatt supposed, was why it was so very convenient that they had been in the cleaning closet for the waiting period.

“Can’t have you looking all rumpled, Sergeant Major.” Flynn brushed his lips against Wyatt’s jaw as he cleaned them both up.

Then he opened the door and stepped out, not a bedamned hair out of place.


	4. It Takes Two to Tango but Three to Swing (Smut)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on tumblr here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/190843857848/hi-mads-i-just-went-back-and-reread-two-to
> 
> The version of the song the men dance to is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B_84N9VF_g

Wyatt looked up from his stretching to see Lucy staring at him with that tilted, squint-eyed look that meant she was making Plans.

“Yes?” he asked, standing up.

“Thinking about what outfit I want you to wear,” Lucy mused.

Ah. “Luce, we haven’t even finished picking our songs yet.”

Flynn entered, grumbling about parking, kissing Lucy on the cheek and sliding an arm around her waist just as Lucy said, “Well that’s hardly my fault, is it?”

“What’s hardly your fault?” Flynn asked, walking over to Wyatt to give him the same greeting.

Lucy was someone that Wyatt wanted to just stare at like a lovesick puppy all day, but Flynn was someone that Wyatt wanted to sink into, bury himself into and never emerge. A star and a black hole, making up his entire universe.

“The fact that we haven’t picked all of our songs yet,” Lucy explains.

“We’ve got most of them.” Flynn was especially fond, Wyatt knew, of their selection for the East Coast Swing: Cee Lo Green’s cover of _You’re So Square_ by Buddy Holly.

“Not the tango. And whose fault is that, hmm?”

Flynn had the grace to look a bit abashed, and Wyatt could feel his face heating up.

Look, just because the tango was… um, rather intimate, and you were pressed up against each other, and the beat was… and Flynn was just–hands, all over, and his leg, his _thigh_ , right up between Wyatt’s…

Point being, every time they did a tango, they ended up fucking.

“I didn’t see you complaining the last time,” Flynn replied, arching an eyebrow.

Lucy didn’t even blush. “You give me plenty of orgasms at home. I don’t need more of them. What I need is you two not turning your dance into a public orgy at a competition.”

“Sex sells.”

“Not _literal_ sex!”

Lucy’s phone rang, interrupting them, and she dug it out of her pocket. Her brow furrowed. “Wyatt, any idea why Jess would be calling me?”

“Beats me.”

Lucy answered the phone and walked out of the studio. “Hey, Jess, everything okay?”

Once she was gone, Flynn shrugged and went over to the Bluetooth speaker. “Speaking of tangos, I have a song idea.”

Wyatt gestured. “This isn’t going to be some stupid—like the orgy song from _Sense8_ , is it?”

Flynn adopted an innocent expression, but Wyatt could see the sass lurking in the corners of his eyes and mouth. “I’m always serious when it comes to dance.”

Wyatt had several videos of Flynn goofing off with Lucy to prove otherwise. “Sure you are.”

To be fair, he never would’ve guessed when they first met that Flynn even knew what the word ‘fun’ meant. But now he knew so much better.

The music started up—a violin—in a very distinctive melody, and Wyatt groaned. “No.”

Flynn smirked at him and tugged him in. “Yes.”

“Oh come _on_.” Wyatt let Flynn lead him, though, laughing when Flynn elaborately dipped him. It was the kind of exaggerated move that you saw from people who were parodying the tango in movies.

“You gonna put a rose in my mouth?” Wyatt asked and Flynn chuckled.

“Don’t give me ideas. Might finally shut you up.”

“Hey, you’re well aware I can still talk with my mouth full.”

Flynn’s eyes darkened and sharpened, like a predator. “Oh, I’m well aware.”

The violin sang and swooped, and Wyatt’s stomach, his whole body, did rather the same as Flynn pulled them tight together, his arm a band of iron, a prison bar, around Wyatt’s lower back. But hey, Wyatt’d take the life sentence. It was a hell of a prison to serve in.

They weren’t following any particular routine—they didn’t have one for the tango yet—but Flynn, as always, knew what the fuck he was doing, and Wyatt enjoyed following, trusting, letting himself be moved where Flynn wanted.

And, okay, maybe he was a bit cheeky about it. He ground his hips against Flynn’s, slid his leg up in a move that wasn’t, strictly, allowed in ballroom. Flynn growled and pressed back, rolling his whole body, and Wyatt could feel Flynn hard against him, making his breath come up short.

It was an oddly appropriate song, Wyatt thought as he got a little more daring and turned his head, brushing his lips against Flynn’s. _Toxic_. That’s what he’d thought of Flynn when they’d first met. Sweet, burning poison.

Flynn nipped at Wyatt’s lips but didn’t fully kiss him, his hips still moving, until Wyatt was dizzy from the dance, the roller coaster violin, and the press of Flynn’s cock against his through their clothes. He whined, tried to sink his weight down so that they went to the floor, but Flynn turned it into a pivot instead.

“Oh no,” he murmured. “Just like this.”

“Flynn. _Garcia_.” He wasn’t a goddamn teenager anymore.

“Just. Like. This.” Flynn’s voice turned into a growl, and Wyatt shuddered. He felt hot all over, confined, his clothes and Flynn’s body trapping him. Then Flynn’s thigh shifted, shoving right between his and lifting him up just a little, just enough.

Abandoning all pretense at dancing, Wyatt thrust against Flynn’s thigh, staring up into Flynn’s unyielding gaze, swallowed by the black hole of him. It felt like his blood was pumping in time to the damn music, a tempo just on the edge of too fast, too hard, and the way Flynn was looking at him—the way Flynn was holding him, _pinning_ him—the rough scratch of fabric, the submission, always following where Flynn led—

He rutted against Flynn like a helpless animal and came with a whimper that quickly turned into a moan when Flynn at last kissed him. The song had ended, the quiet sharp and cold in its wake, but the pleasant buzzing in his ears made up for that.

“You have no fucking clue,” Flynn snarled softly, words landing like stalking tiger paws, “what it’s like to have you in my arms like that.”

Wyatt could feel Flynn still hard against him. “I think I have one clue.” He didn’t know which was hotter, Flynn leading him like this, or knowing that his following turned Flynn on so much.

Either way, he wasn’t wasting a second in returning the favor. He sank to his knees, looking up through his lashes in the way that he knew drove Flynn nuts as he opened Flynn’s pants.

He’d just gotten up a good rhythm, Flynn’s cock thick and pulsing in his mouth, Flynn’s hand in his hair and quite a few colorful Croatian curses ringing in his ears, when Lucy entered again. “Okay, so guess who needs help proposing to Am—” She paused.

Flynn, the bastard, came down Wyatt’s throat and Wyatt almost choked from the combination of Lucy’s annoyance and the surprise of it.

“Ten minutes,” she announced. “I left you alone for ten minutes.”

Wyatt, Flynn’s damn cock still in his mouth because Flynn’s hand was continuing to hold him in place, looked up at his boyfriend.

Flynn seemed completely unfazed. “How do you feel about Britney Spears?”


	5. Confidence Trick I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/181285855048/this-is-the-equivalent-of-me-crawling-on-my-knees

Their first Christmas is in Switzerland, because Wyatt is (according to Lucy) a “freak who likes the cold” and Flynn vetoed going any farther north in the winter because “I’m from Croatia I know you Americans think the weather in Europe is all the same but I am not a fucking snowbird.”

They’ve been hopping from place to place for months now, under various assumed names, making sure the FBI and the Mafia alike haven’t realized they’re actually all alive, and as much as Wyatt’s enjoying it, it’s shit for keeping track of important dates.

So he actually forgets it’s Christmas until he’s woken up by Lucy shaking him and cooing, “Wyaaaatt… wake uuuuup…”

He stirs to see that she’s shaking Flynn awake as well, and that she’s already dressed in pajamas (pajamas she was definitely not wearing a few hours ago when she passed out snuggled on Flynn’s chest after they made enemies of their hotel neighbors because Wyatt is, ah, a bit noisy). “Wha izzit?”

“I ordered room service,” she says, kissing him on the cheek and then running her hands through Flynn’s hair to placate him—Flynn is a light sleeper so he usually wakes up first but a morning person he is not. “But it’s already ten.”

“We don’t have anywhere to be,” Wyatt replies, even as he searches his brain in a panic in case there is somewhere they have to be and he forgot.

“No,” Lucy says, smiling. “But we don’t want the day to go to waste.”

“We don’t?”

Lucy reaches back behind her and holds up two brightly wrapped presents that she shakes invitingly. “Nope.”

Wyatt sits up. “Fuck it’s Christmas.”

Flynn groans, burying his head under a pillow. Lucy pinches him. “Nuh-uh grumpypants, you know the drill.”

“There’s a drill?” Wyatt asks.

“The drill,” Flynn replies from under the pillow, “is that she persists in this even though she knows I would rather die for her than go out in the stinking snow.”

“It’s not Christmas without a snowman,” Lucy replies archly. “We eat breakfast, we go out and make a snowman, then we have sex in a way we’ve never had it before, and then we set off fireworks.”

“…wait _you’re_ the ones who always set off those illegal fireworks at 5th and Main!?” Wyatt squawks.

Lucy grins. “Yes, aren’t they fantastic? And then we give each other books and read in the evening.”

“I am not going out, it’s a fucking two feet of snow,” Flynn says, still under the pillow.

“And here I thought we’d try that role play thing you wanted,” Lucy replies with a sigh. “But I guess not…”

“This is blackmail.”

“It’s being a loving husband,” Lucy says. She hands Wyatt one of the presents. “Open it.”

Wyatt doesn’t–he and Jess didn’t really have any traditions. Neither of them came from good families, so Christmas was just the two of them, always small. Jess would make a nice dinner and he’d make a Christmas playlist and they’d each give each other something nice. They couldn’t afford much so ‘nice’ wasn’t exactly a Tiffany necklace, but still. He saved up one year and got her a waterproof watch, the kind that rock climbers and divers used, since she was always getting busted up in her investigative work. She got him a nice jacket to keep him warm when he was still just a beat cop.

But then Jess had died, and Christmas had died with her. He spent the first year with Rufus, who had to literally drag him kicking and screaming to join Rufus’s mom and brother and Mason. The next year Dave had brought him to Christmas Eve dinner with Dave’s huge family, and then he spent the day of alone, just sleeping and having a James Bond marathon and feeling sorry for himself.

He hadn’t even thought to get his spouses anything.

Lucy nudges him, sending him back to the present. “Open it.”

Wyatt opens it—and frowns—and pulls out the pair of earrings. “These are real nice, babe, but… um…”

“Give them to me,” Lucy tells him.

The moment he passes them over to her Lucy gasps, putting her hand to her chest. “Oh, Wyatt, these are perfect!” A very thorough kiss is planted on him as a reward.

Flynn sticks his hand out (his head still under the pillow) like he’s a child reluctantly agreeing to get a flu shot and Lucy puts the other present in his palm. Flynn’s present is a book on The Alamo which Lucy promptly takes from him, gasping in fake surprise and pleasure, and then kisses him as well.

“…does she always do this?” Wyatt asks.

“I knew you two would forget,” Lucy replies, putting the earrings on and setting the book on the nightstand. “And you’d beat yourselves up for it when you realized. But now I have lovely presents and so you don’t have to feel guilty. Ta-da!”

She hands them each one more present. Wyatt chokes when he sees his, holding up the dildo. “Really?”

“We’ve just been using the ones we bought for us, you deserve something a little more individual,” Lucy replies.

Flynn is holding up a purple tie. “Let me guess. I now need to make a suit that fits this.”

“Colors, Flynn, it’s like you’re allergic to them.”

Wyatt grins, watching the banter. He hadn’t just fallen in love with Lucy and Flynn—he’d fallen in love with how Lucy and Flynn loved each other, how they brought out the best in each other and how absolutely devoted they were to one another.

“I’ll help you build a snowman, Lucy,” he says, smirking at Flynn.

Flynn’s glare sends a shiver down Wyatt’s spine. “I can make your life difficult.”

“I can withhold sex.”

Flynn arches an eyebrow. “No, you can’t.”

…dammit. “No, I can’t.”

“Please, Garcia?” Lucy pouts, tilting her head to the side.

Even Big Bad Garcia Flynn can’t deny his wife when she looks at him like that. “Fine. But then we’re back inside.”

Lucy kisses him delightedly, then scrambles off the bed.

“She and Amy would make one,” Flynn explains quietly, so that Lucy can’t hear.

Ah. That–that makes sense.

None of them, Wyatt’s pretty sure, mean for it to become a tradition, but after that–they buy themselves presents and then ‘give’ them to each other. It’s like some weird version of White Elephant. They do also tend to get each other real presents, but it’s quite the tradition and one their kids never quite understand.

The kids also don’t understand the sex thing but that’s because the kids don’t know about the sex thing and they intend for their kids to never know.

But this is before their children, before they move to the Bay Area, before Lucy’s even aware she’s pregnant, before all of it. This is their first Christmas where they go out and build a snowman, and get into a snowball fight that ends in Flynn tackling Wyatt and Lucy laughing so hard she falls down a snowbank, and trooping back and eating and then having more loud sex to annoy the neighbors, and then sleeping, and then quietly reading books together sprawled out on the bed. Lucy’s head is in his lap, her feet in Flynn’s, and Wyatt’s got his head resting on Flynn’s shoulder and he’s warm and full and with the two people he loves most in the whole fucking world and they actually made it the fuck out of dodge _alive_ and if that isn’t a Christmas miracle… then he doesn’t know what is.


	6. Confidence Trick II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/181260794468/okay-so-while-im-here-and-still-thinking-about

Amy Maria Preston-Flynn is a contrary and stubborn little troublemaker who is absolutely determined to make everything around her as difficult as possible for those around her.

She proves this by not only being a week late after her due date, but by getting stuck on the way out, and then kicking up an almighty fuss once she is out, deciding that she does not like being held by this doctor one goddamn bit.

Wyatt is soothing Lucy, who just spent ten hours pushing and screaming and cursing both of the men for doing this to her (as if it wasn’t something she’d dreamed of for ages) and so before Flynn knows it, this tiny screaming bundle is being placed in his arms.

He swears his heart stops.

He nestles this precious, tiny human life, this life that is parts of all three of them (fuck biology), into the crook of his arm and gently runs his finger down her nose. “Shh, shh, _mišiću_ , we’re here, we hear you.”

Amy, to the shock of all in the room, actually goes quiet. Her eyes are a light blue, as most babies’ eyes are, and they gaze up at Flynn with an odd sort of wonder.

His heart cracks open, pieces of it flying straight into Amy and it reminds him so much of when Iris was born (although Iris was a sensible child who was born on time and with minimal fuss) that he almost bursts into tears on the spot. Oh, God, nothing could ever replace the child he lost, but he loves this child just as much, more than his own life, more than anything.

Amy sniffles at him and makes a tiny gurgling noise. He’s smiling so wide his face hurts. “That’s much better. Do you want to see your Mama? Is that it?”

He looks over at Lucy, who is terribly, horribly pale, her skin almost yellow, big bags under her eyes. That labor was nothing short of terrifying for both him and Wyatt, watching the woman they adored in pain and unable to do anything about it, scared that at any moment she might be taken from them—that they endured the mafia, and the violence, and the fleeing for their lives, only to lose her this way in the end.

Wyatt is making Lucy drink water, and he looks over at Flynn and shakes his head. She’s in no state to be holding anything right now, as much as she might want to.

Flynn rocks Amy back and forth, soothing her. “Don’t worry _mišiću_ , we’ll get you everything you need.”

Amy yawns and rubs her little face into his chest, as if she somehow understands, and trusts that he will, in fact, take care of her.

Flynn kisses the top of her head, where her hair is soft and downy, feeling himself shaking a little.

Whether it’s being the first to hold her, or the fact that she’s his first child since Iris, or something deeper, from that moment on, Amy is very much her papa’s girl.

* * *

Ethan Logan, by contrast, doesn’t come late—instead he comes a month early, and is so very small, small enough that Wyatt feels a shock of terror. He’s so very quiet, too, not loud and shrieking like his sister, and Wyatt finds himself praying desperately that they won’t lose this child, oh please no.

Lucy’s second delivery wasn’t any easier than the first, despite Ethan’s size. Flynn’s outside in the waiting room with Amy asleep in his lap, her head nestled on his chest, and Wyatt’s busy with Lucy and Ethan so the doctor tells Flynn that maybe it would be best if his wife didn’t have any more biological children.

Something about her not actually going into labor properly with Amy, and having to induce it, and now Ethan’s coming early and it all goes over Wyatt’s head but the gist of it is: unless they want to risk Lucy’s life (and they don’t, oh God, that’s the last thing they ever want), Ethan should be the last.

Lucy holds their dark-haired little baby boy in her arms, named after his grandfather and his daddy, and her lips tremble dangerously. “He’s so small,” she whispers. “Amy wasn’t this small.”

Wyatt is reminded, of all things, of the paper Lucy did on Queen Anne for her _Women in Power_ class junior year. Anne had seventeen children, only one of which survived infancy. The first few were stillborn or lived a year, but then it just got worse, miscarriage after miscarriage.

He desperately doesn’t want that for Lucy.

They all stay up with Ethan, making sure he eats enough, making sure he gets whatever he needs, because he makes only the quietest of crying noises and sometimes makes no noise at all, and there are nights where Wyatt just stares down for hours into the crib because he will be the best father ever, he promises, he will be patient and loving and never yell even once if only his baby boy will make it.

Amy, however, is not scared in the slightest. She brings Ethan her little stuffed giraffe and elephant, big animals so he will know to get big, too, and when she’s asked by Flynn if she’s not worried she replies, “No. He’s mine. My brother. I want him to stay.”

And, well, perhaps that conviction, that simple childish thought that if she wants it, she will get it, is enough—because Ethan does, in fact, get big and stays.

* * *

Flynn ends up being the one to take care of the kids.

Wyatt works as a private investigator. He deals with a lot of cheating spouses and tends to come home railing about toxic heteronormative relationships, but taking those jobs allows him to take the job like the crying mom who needs someone, anyone, to help her and she can’t go to the police because her husband who hits her is captain of the local precinct. It allows him to take the job where the police gave up but the parents need to know what happened to their son, please, any answer is better than this horror of not knowing.

Lucy’s got her degree, and then she decides she wants to be a high school history teacher, to help kids enjoy learning and to maybe be a positive presence for them, if their home lives are like hers. She loves helping people to learn and there’s still that bit of a natural leader in her, that person who likes to command a room.

Flynn though, he doesn’t know what he wants to do or who he wants to be, but he does know he wants every second with his children that he can. So he stays home and takes care of them—it’s not like they’re hurting for money, their offshore account takes care of that.

He’s definitely Amy’s favorite parent. He carries her everywhere the first couple of years, her arms wrapped around him, chattering in his ear because Amy has an opinion about literally everything and has to share it. It’s “ _Tata_ look at this!” and “ _Tata_ look at that!” for the first few years of her life. Flynn’s face whenever Amy toddles over to show him something, or tugs on his face because he wasn’t _listening_ properly, Papa, you have to _listen_ this is _important_ , it’s like sunshine personified.

Ethan’s pretty evenly balanced between the three, although he’s a bit of a Mama’s boy when it really comes down to it. He’s the splitting image of Flynn, but he likes to just sit quietly in Wyatt’s lap while Wyatt works on cars—he fixes up the cars of friends and neighbors in his spare time and hardly ever charges them, usually just because it’s a point of pride with some people that they have to pay and won’t take no for an answer—and Lucy is his confidant. He loves to have her read history books to him as he falls asleep. He’s his sister’s quiet shadow, and Amy’s fiercely protective of him.

But Flynn gets them up in the morning, and plays with them, and they’re fluent in Croatian because of him although they mostly use it at home, and he cooks them dinner and they adore him, and so it doesn’t occur to any of them that they might hit a snag, until Amy is enrolled in ballet class and Flynn comes to pick her up and the teachers won’t let him.

Lucy and Wyatt dropped Amy off that morning on their way to take Lucy to class, and she does look like Wyatt and Lucy with her light brown eyes and blonde hair, but Lucy also said her husband would pick Amy up, and so Flynn doesn’t understand why the fuck the studio head is acting so suspicious of him.

“Look, her name is Preston-Flynn. I’m Flynn. I have I.D. and everything.”

The receptionist looks up at the head of the studio, who’s squinting. “But I met the father this morning.”

Flynn bites back a retort because yes, Wyatt was with Lucy this morning, but the things he wants to call this woman will not win him any friends. He sees Amy peeking through the window of the studio behind them and waves at her.

Amy, delighted, waves back, and asks her teacher if she can see her Papa now.

Her teacher tells her no, that they have to double check, and is she sure this man is her father?

When faced with this information Amy does not sit down in silence, or acquiesce to the authority figures, or even break down into tears.

No, Amy is the daughter of three very, very stubborn people and so she opens her lungs and lets out the most ferocious shriek of rage that her five-year-old body can possibly muster.

To her credit, this is after trying to explain in both English and garbled Croatian (her ballet instructor is Russian and it probably sounds similar enough in her young mind that she thinks it’s the same thing as her father’s native tongue) that this is her _tata_ , he is very important to her, she _must_ see him. But when she is ignored, she decides to punish every single person in the dance studio by demonstrating her generous lung capacity.

Personally, at this point, the receptionist is pretty sure the intimidating man in front of her is Amy’s father, if only because of the absolutely distressed look on his face when he—and everyone else—hears the outraged scream Amy lets out. But she has to do her due diligence and so she calls the name of the mother who dropped Amy off that morning.

Lucy is far from pleased to be interrupted in the middle of her _The One Percent Strikes Again: Correlations Between the Making of the Civil War and Today_ seminar, and informs the secretary that yes, that man is her husband, she said he’d be there to pick up her daughter, it’s not his fault he looks like the kind of guy who drives a white unmarked van but also since when do child abductors dress in three piece suits?

Amy, meanwhile, manages to keep up her absolutely ear-shattering shriek, causing all of the other kids to put their hands over their ears, until Flynn is allowed into the studio at which point she promptly stops shrieking, dries her tears, and scampers over to him. “ _Tata_ ,” she says pointedly, hugging his leg and glaring at the assembled group of teachers. It’s a firm rebuke.

Flynn tries to detangle her from his leg and Amy lets out a warning growl, as if to say that she will commence shrieking again if he is removed from her sight or even indeed stops touching her.

Flynn picks her up and Amy wraps herself around him like a koala, chanting in that childish sing-song way, “Papa _tata_ Papa _tata_ Papa _tata_ ,” occasionally glaring again at her teachers.

She’s clearly teaching them all a lesson, in her humble opinion.

After that, they get more careful. Flynn is dutifully listed as the father, since he and Lucy are the legally married ones, and Wyatt is designated as the emergency contact, either the uncle or the family friend. Amy is quietly furious about this, although at five years old she can’t quite explain why. All she knows is she has her Daddy and her Papa and her Mama and it’s not fair that people can’t understand this simple fact.

As she gets older, she gets involved in the LGBTQ+ club at school. She attends marches. She does rallies. She raises money. Her parents are proud, although not sure if they understand where the fervor comes from. But she knows, she’s known since five years old–someday she’s going to make it so nobody has to feel the way she did.

* * *

Ethan, on the other hand, simply comes to the wrong conclusion.

“Mama?” he asks one day.

“Mmm, yes sweet boy?” Lucy asks. Why did she decide to teach teenagers? Dear God these essays are awful. She makes another red mark.

“What happened to Tommy’s other parent?”

Lucy pauses and looks up. “What?”

Ethan is four and Tommy across the street is his best friend. He has two lovely mothers, Jasmine and Theresa.

“He only has two parents,” Ethan says. “What happened to his third mommy? Did she die?”

Oh, Lord. Lucy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then picks her son up and puts him in her lap. “Honey, most kids just have two parents.”

“…why?”

“Because… most people like that. It’s hard, sometimes, to be in a relationship, and with three people it can be even harder, and, um, not everyone’s lucky to find two people to love. Papa and I were just each other for a long time but then we were lucky enough to meet Daddy.”

“Oh.” Ethan frowns. “So we’re different?”

“Yes, but that’s okay. It’s a good different.”

Ethan swings his legs idly. “Okay. So I don’t have to feel bad for Tommy?”

“No, sweet boy, you don’t.” She hugs him. “But it’s great that you thought of him.”

Ethan scampers off to play, and Lucy heaves a sigh. That could’ve gone… worse, she supposes.

* * *

Ethan isn’t the firecracker his sister is, but he is the son of three volatile people, and so sometimes… his temper comes out.

The high schoolers all have their theories–most of them soap opera worthy–about Mrs. Preston and the two men she lives with. Their parents have all settled on the idea that Wyatt is just a very close friend who lost his wife and isn’t it nice that he helps out with the kids and they let him stay with them, but the high schoolers all know better. Something fishy is up with that.

(Of course, this parental theory could possibly be because some of the single mothers would like to be the next Mrs. Wyatt Logan, and at one point it gets bad enough that the principal has to remind everyone that the sexual harassment policies of the school _do_ extend to the volunteer parents, and Lucy has to be held back–physically–from clocking Stacey Gorman upside the head with her lesson planner.)

But some of the high school boys are, well, assholes, and they don’t care so much what the situation is, they just know they’d tap that if they could.

Flynn doesn’t know this, so when his son comes home from school at fourteen and asks if Flynn will teach him some fight moves, Flynn isn’t as suspicious as he should be.

Which is how Lucy gets a call to please come to the principal’s office to pick up her kid.

“What did Amy do this time?” she asks, because Amy thinks her fist is a great way to punish misogyny and once spray-painted the trans flag on the school wall for Trans Visibility Day and got fined for graffiti and another time spontaneously led the school in a sit-in in the cafeteria that halted school for the rest of the day and miiiight have walked into school in just a skirt and a bra to protest the stricter dress code.

Principal Jenkins looks pained. “Actually…”

Ethan, sporting a fat lip and a black eye and bruised knuckles, turns in the chair. “Hi, Mom,” he says.

Lucy just about falls over.

“He got in a fight,” she announces at dinner that evening. “Which one of you taught him how to get someone into a headlock?”

“All right, Ethan!” Amy crows, offering her hand up for a high five.

Wyatt chokes on his salad. “He _what_? _Ethan_? Are we sure it wasn’t self-defense?”

“I thought it was just for fun!” Flynn protested. He gives Ethan a firm look. “Ethan Logan, you know we don’t advocate violence.”

“Who won the fight?” Amy asks eagerly. Wyatt elbows her.

“You’d be glad!” Ethan protests. “They were calling Mom a MILF and saying all these things–you always say to never talk about a woman like that and they _were_ and you would’ve done the same.”

Wyatt looks directly at Flynn in a way that conveys an entire goddamn paragraph about how Flynn has absolutely no ground to stand on whatsoever given that he once beat a guy half to death for a) treating Lucy like an object to be bargained for and because b) Wyatt sarcastically called the guy ‘sir’. Flynn glares back at him as if to say Wyatt better drop the bratty attitude before Flynn drags him off somewhere to fuck him into submission. Lucy glares archly at the both of them because she can and will handle her own battles, thank you, whether those battles are with untrustworthy runners or immature teenage boys.

About ten seconds of silence pass.

“Ethan,” Lucy says at last, looking at him. “We’re so proud that you want to defend me. We are. And that you know it’s not right to talk about anyone like that, no matter what their gender. But there are other ways to handle the situation. With your words, by reporting to a teacher who can talk to them… violence isn’t the answer.”

“It’s not usually the answer,” Wyatt amends.

Flynn kicks him under the table.

“Oh, and no dessert for a week,” Lucy adds.

Ethan squawks in protest. “Amy didn’t get no dessert when she punched the guy who said you were cheating on Papa with Dad!”

“I forgot about that,” Flynn says, grinning. He looks over at Wyatt. “Want to cheat with me next?”

“You’re an asshole,” Wyatt replies, but he’s grinning.

“We dealt with Amy’s situation and now we’re dealing with yours. It’s final.”

Ethan looks at his dads in a silent appeal, but Lucy’s word is the final one in this house, and they all know it.

Later, when the kids are asleep, Wyatt finally mentions, “you know it’s kind of hard to discipline them when you know you’ve done the same thing.”

Lucy thumps him with her book. “We’re teaching them to be better.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that you once literally–literally!–groped me in front of the guy who wanted to sleep with you.”

“You want me to ever grope you again, Wyatt, I suggest you stop talking.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Nine times out of ten if there’s a problem, Amy goes to Flynn.

She goes to him for everything, absolutely everything. He always knows when something’s wrong—he’ll take one look at her and say, “what’s up _mišiću_?” and Amy will burst into tears and tell him everything.

So Wyatt could get knocked down with a feather when he gets a call at midnight from the daughter who’s supposedly asleep in bed.

“Ames?”

“Daddy?” Shit, she hasn’t called him that in years. “I’m at the 24 hour diner on Parson’s, can you come get me?”

“Yeah, yeah of course.”

He sneaks out, careful not to wake Flynn, who’s the light sleeper, and drives to the diner.

Amy, his baby girl—because she still is and always will be even though she’s sixteen—is sitting in a corner booth with a glass of water and looks absolutely wrecked. The waitresses all give him sympathetic looks as he walks up to her and she starts crying all over again.

“Oh, Ames. Baby.” He pulls her in and hugs her. “What happened?”

The whole story spills out—how she snuck out to go to a party to see a boy, and saw that boy kissing someone else, and there was alcohol but she didn’t have any she promises, and please, please, _please_ don’t tell Papa.

“Boys are stupid, baby girl,” Wyatt tells her, quietly signaling to the waitress for some pancakes and extra bacon. “They can’t tell how special you or any other girl is at this age. You’re better off without them.”

He’s tempted to go back to the party and punch this guy in the face for hurting his precious girl, but he suspects that’s part of why Amy didn’t want Flynn to know—Flynn _would_ punch the guy. And maybe torch the guy’s car while he was at it.

“Why don’t you want Papa to know?”

Amy sniffles. “I promised him I wouldn’t sneak out.”

Wyatt sighs. Amy wants so badly for Flynn to be proud of her. How can she not see that nothing in the world could make Flynn stop being proud of her? Flynn’s worshiped Amy from the moment she was born, they all have. “Papa wouldn’t be angry, Amy. Or disappointed.”

Amy just keeps crying into his shirt, so Wyatt hugs her and hugs her and makes her eat her pancakes and bacon and hugs her some more, and then takes her home.

Lucy and Flynn have by then woken up, noticing that Wyatt’s left the bed and secretly terrified, as they all still are on some level, that the feds or the Petrovs found them, but he just shuffles Amy past them and shakes his head quietly to stop their questions.

“She needed to get out of the house,” he tells them in bed once Amy’s been tucked in. “Heartbreak, couldn’t sleep, you know how it is.”

The next morning Flynn makes Amy her favorite breakfast, and Lucy does her hair so she feels confident going into school. Amy doesn’t say much, for once, but her eyes are big and grateful when she looks at Wyatt, and his heart squeezes

After that, Amy comes to him for a few more things. When she backs the car into a pole. When she gets into a bad fight at school, really bad, and gets detention for two weeks.

Wyatt’s not sure why she feels she can mess up in front of him, why she feels safe doing that with him but not the others, but he’ll always be her shoulder to cry on, every time. He wraps her hands and shows her how to fix the car and kisses it better and just tries to be there.

He hopes it’s enough.

* * *

Ethan and Amy get along well, for the most part. But like all siblings there are… issues.

Amy hates that she thinks this, but she wishes she and Ethan were swapped. Ethan looks just like Papa, and so of course he’s the favorite. Dad and Mom adore Papa, and Ethan’s the good kid, the one who does everything right, and sometimes it makes her want to scream.

Ethan doesn’t like to think about it, but Amy gets away with so much shit. Their parents are strict with him, because she was their miracle and she came first, and Ethan can’t ever get away with jack shit, and of course Papa worships the ground Amy walks on and everyone always frets over Amy, and it just fucking sucks.

It all explodes right after Amy goes to college and gets in trouble when a prank to protest the lack of crackdown on campus rape lands her in hot water with the college administration.

The fight she and Lucy have is epic.

They’re both screaming at each other, and Flynn’s trying to play peacemaker and Wyatt looks like he wants to throw up and Ethan’s just sitting there kind of enjoying this and kind of hating it, and then Amy screams out, “Well I’m fucking sorry I can’t be perfect like Ethan!”

Ethan jumps up. “Excuse me? Like you don’t get away with literally everything, _Princess—_ ” He doesn’t notice how his mother flinches like she’s been slapped. “—so don’t you go blaming this all on me!”

“Me!? _Me_!? When all you do is just, ‘Ethan won a prize’ and ‘Ethan’s on the Dean’s List’, like sorry I’m not fucking good enough for you, God you already look just like Papa so of course they like you better–”

Lucy bursts into tears, startling everyone. Flynn crosses to her at once and holds her, murmuring in Croatian and English, and Wyatt runs a hand through his hair before grabbing Ethan. “C’mon, buddy, you and me are going on a walk.”

It hurts, it really fucking hurts that Amy puts so much value on wanting to be Flynn’s biological kid. Like she’s just taken Wyatt’s love for granted or something just because—from her nose and her blonde hair and the way she scoffs when she’s angry—it’s clear that she’s his as far as DNA is concerned.

But that’s not the issue right now, the issue is Amy and Ethan’s apparent long-simmering issues with their status in the family and the fact that Amy has, whether she’s realized it or not, touched the very, very sore spot inside of Lucy, and so he takes Ethan on a walk around the neighborhood and talks to him. Tells him about how Ethan was so small when he was born, and how terrified they all were of losing him, and how they know they were too lenient with Amy in some ways and so they tried to be better with him, to prepare to curb the terrible temper that lives in all of them, and how if they messed up in that he’s so, so sorry, but they have never, and will never, put standards on him as if he’s less than his sister.

Lucy, on the other hand, is completely distraught—one might dare to say inconsolable. Amy has never seen her mother completely break down, didn’t think her mother was capable of breaking down, and starts crying a little too out of sympathy and guilt.

Flynn gathers Lucy to him and rubs her back, then looks at Amy. “ _Mišiću,_ your mother…” He takes a deep breath. “Your mother was her mother’s favorite. And it was made painfully clear to her younger sister that was the case. Your mother would never, ever want you to feel she had a favorite. She loves you both so very much.”

He pauses, kisses Lucy’s head, then takes another breath. “I was married once before. To a wonderful woman. I loved her with everything in me.” He breathes once again, forces himself to continue. “And I had a daughter. The light of my life.”

He looks Amy in the eye. “But just because I loved my wife, does not mean I love your mother or your father any less. I would lay down my life for them. And just because I loved my baby girl doesn’t mean that I don’t adore you so much it hurts. The strength of the love is the same, even if the expression is different. And that’s how it should be. Your mother loves you and your brother differently in expression, but the same in strength.”

Lucy manages to dry her eyes. “Come here.”

Amy walks over and is pulled into her mother’s lap. She’s too big for it really but Lucy clearly doesn’t care. She fingers a strand of Amy’s hair. “You get this from your father.” She taps Amy’s nose. “And this, too.” She taps between Amy’s eyes. “You get those brown beauties from me.” She taps Amy’s lips. “And this smile from me too.”

She places her hand over Amy’s heart. “You get this from your Papa. Don’t you dare doubt his love. Others made that mistake before. You are his. I promise you that. And you…” Her voice breaks and she has to breathe for a moment. “You were named after the thing I loved most in the world. I’m sorry I–I never told you much about her. But God I loved her, more than anyone else, and the moment you were born, I loved you more than anyone else. So of course I couldn’t have named you after anyone but her.”

“But you were so _hard_ on me…”

“And your brother feels we were hard on him and easy on you. It’s all perspective.” Lucy takes her daughter’s face in her hands. “But my God, Amy, I am so sorry I failed you. I am so, so sorry, dear heart.”

Amy wraps her arms around her mother’s shoulders and presses their foreheads together, crying. Lucy holds her, shushes her, mothers her, Flynn still kissing Lucy’s head and rubbing her back. He doesn’t think his wife has failed in anything, but then, Lucy is still sometimes prone to self-doubt.

“You owe your papa an apology,” Lucy says after a while. “And your father.”

Amy wipes at her eyes. “And Dad?”

Lucy looks up at Flynn. “As if biology was what made you close to him.” The smile she gives him is as adoring as ever. She looks at Amy. “And Dad deserves an apology. Don’t think I don’t know all the times you’ve called him and asked him to keep secrets for you. Chasing after Papa’s love while abandoning his. He loves you just as much, Amy. And he deserves for you to appreciate that.”

Flynn helps Amy stand up and immediately hugs her. “I messed up,” she whispers. “I messed up so bad.”

“Trust me, your father knows a thing or two about messing up,” Flynn replies wryly. “He’ll forgive you. He already has.”

When Ethan and Wyatt get back, Ethan’s just as contrite, shuffling over to Lucy and crawling into her lap the way he always used to as a child. His apologies are along the same vein as Amy’s, equally shaken by seeing his invincible mother, the one his fathers treat like a goddess, so upset and wounded. Lucy calls him her sweet boy, her baby boy, and forgives him as quick as anything because Lucy forgives even when maybe she shouldn’t.

Amy shuffles over to Wyatt. “Daddy?”

Wyatt glances at Flynn, who nods his head towards the kitchen. Wyatt takes the suggestion and leads his daughter away from the others. “What’s up honey?”

Amy looks at the floor. “You—you know I love you, right?”

“I know you do.”

Amy’s lower lip wobbles. It reminds him so much of when she was a little toddler, his heart feels like it’s cracking open. “I’m sorry, I didn’t–I thought you just, I don’t know, I wasn’t fair and I love Papa but I love you and I don’t know what’s wrong with me and…” She looks up at him and oh, Wyatt thinks he knows what he looked like when he begged Flynn and Lucy to forgive him. “I love you so much, Dad, I promise, I _promise_ I do.”

Wyatt hugs her tightly, because unlike Flynn (who, frankly, had a right to snarl at him and kick up a fuss), he’s not going to withhold forgiveness for even a second. She’s eighteen, she’s young, sometimes she takes her family for granted, as everyone does. “I know, baby girl. It’s all right. Just let it out.” He pets her hair. “You know I once told your mom and dad a really big lie. And I kept that lie up for months and months. And they forgave me. So we’ve got a lot of practice at it. And you didn’t do anything nearly as bad as what I did. So I think you’re in the clear.”

He still cries, though. Because he’ll forgive her, he already has, but fuck, he needed to hear her say that. Judging by the knowing looks Lucy and Flynn give him, they knew that too.

* * *

It’s Christmas break, and Amy’s home for the holidays, and has to grit her teeth because she goes to a liberal college where she proudly and fiercely tells everyone that _yes_ she has three parents and they’re all still stupidly in love with each other and she doesn’t have to hide anymore, and now she’s back home with neighbors who still pretend not to understand.

Lucy’s subdued. It’s weeks after the big argument to end all arguments, and she and Wyatt and Flynn have decided it’s time to tell the kids the truth. Who they are, or were, and why she’s never talked about the first Amy, or about her family at all, where they get their money from, why Amy was absolutely forbidden from taking a semester abroad in Russia, why there’s a panic room in between Ethan and Amy’s bedrooms that they were taught was their ‘secret playroom’ that they weren’t allowed to tell their friends about, why Flynn never told them about Lorena and Iris.

She’s also subdued because, well, she can’t help feeling like she’s failed her children.

She vowed never to be like her mother. She would be generous with her love to both of them, never make them feel like her love was conditional, never try to pit them against each other.

And look what happened anyway.

The first night Amy’s back, dinner is noisy. Amy’s got stories and Ethan has questions and Flynn’s got questions and Wyatt’s got a snappy comment for everything. Lucy thinks her own quiet has gone unnoticed, at least by her children. Her husbands certainly notice, and curl around her in bed that night, holding her tightly, but their devotion she’s never doubted. It’s not their reassurance she needs.

She lies awake in bed for hours, but she can’t sleep. What if she was never supposed to be a mother and she just ignored the warning signs? What if she’s damaged her children? What if the violence and abuse she tried so hard to shed from her upbringing has still found a way to permeate her life now?

Then, at around one a.m., the door opens.

A thin blonde figure crawls into bed, wiggling in between Flynn and Lucy. “Mama?” Amy whispers.

Lucy turns to her. “Hey, honey, what is it?”

Amy lays her head on her mother’s shoulder and wraps her arms around her. “I missed you,” she whispers, her voice thick. “I missed you so much.”

Lucy holds her daughter tightly, shaking slightly. About ten minutes later Ethan comes in, too, always so observant, and slides into bed on her other side, elbowing Wyatt accidentally in the process, and hugs her too with a flimsy excuse about a nightmare.

Lucy holds her babies close, close as she can, and kisses their heads, one light and one dark, and whispers that she loves them, she loves them, she _loves_ them, and they whisper that they love her, too.

Wyatt wakes up about twenty minutes later when he nearly falls off the bed, and wakes up Flynn, and they go and bunk in Ethan’s bed for the rest of the night. And when Lucy wakes up her babies are still clinging to her, and she cries just a little, because they love her, and maybe she did something right after all.


	7. Confidence Trick III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/188728949938/calling-to-a-the-spoopy-season-and-b-the-best-au

Flynn wasn’t paranoid, no matter what Lucy and Wyatt kept telling him.

He just thought it was only wise that they take extra precautions for the day. A bunch of people walking around in masks? If he was a hitman tasked with taking care of Lucy and Garcia Flynn, former mafiosos for the most powerful Russian crime family in the books, he’d pick a day like Halloween to do it. Everyone was in costume. Nobody would even suspect.

Lucy was much more concerned with getting Ethan and Amy’s costumes right. Amy wanted to be a pirate. “Pirate _king_ ,” she would say, in her best imitation of Kiera Knightley’s voice, when anyone asked. Ethan wanted to be Patch from _101 Dalmations_ , his current film obsession. Flynn knew that entire animated film by heart now, and Lucy and Wyatt liked to pretend it annoyed them when he would sing “Cruella DeVil” under his breath but he had overheard Lucy telling Wyatt it was annoyingly attractive so check and mate to him.

Wyatt’s concern was the house decorations. “We never did stuff like this when I was a kid,” he explained when Flynn asked him if buying so many fake gravestones for the front yard was _really_ necessary. “My house was kind of out of the way and so we never did anything for Halloween. And my dad never let me trick or treat.”

As usual, when Wyatt mentioned something that hinted at his awful father, especially when accompanied by a blush and that slight pout, Flynn went softer than melted butter. So Wyatt had decorated the entire damn house, inside and out (the first floor, anyway, Flynn was not having bats or spiders in his damn bedroom) so trick or treaters could wander through and have an age-appropriately scary haunted house to walk through.

“Flynn?” Lucy called. “Darling? My love? Light of my life?”

“Yes?” Flynn stuck his head out from the kitchen, where he was trying to find where he and Wyatt had hidden the Halloween candy for the trick or treaters. They’d had to hide it, because this was their fourth attempt at buying said candy.

Lucy had eaten all three previous attempts.

The woman herself marched in, holding up Amy’s gorgeous dark blue pirate coat. “Why did I find a GPS tracker in the collar of this coat?”

Busted. “Um…”

Lucy set the coat down and slid her hands up his chest. “Garcia. They’re going to be okay. You and I will be with them the whole time. Wyatt will be at home if something goes wrong.”

“If someone comes after us—if they _find_ us—you know we look away for just a moment and they’ve run off somewhere, on tonight, of all nights…”

“Nobody will come.” Lucy sounded so _sure_. “It’s going to be okay.”

“But we don’t _know_ that.” Flynn ran a hand through his hair. “I know it’s ridiculous. I know it’s been a decade. But it just—it helps me to—to feel better, to know that I took precautions. The last time I didn’t take precautions, I lost my family. And I could never lose any of you.”

Lucy’s face was soft, her eyes glittering as she gently fixed his hair. “All right, darling. If it’s what you need.” She paused. “Wyatt found the cameras you put up, by the way.”

“That’s not for mafia hitmen, that’s in case some teenagers decide to get smart and try to swipe anything.”

“What could they possibly swipe?”

“Family photographs?”

“Family photographs.”

“It’s the one thing you can’t replace,” Flynn said, grinning, and Lucy smacked his arm.

“Every day I regret letting you two watch John Mulaney. Every. Day.”

“ _Tata!_ ” Amy yelled. “Where’s my coat! I wanna be a pirate now!”

Flynn was well aware he was an absolute sucker for his daughter, thanks. “Right here, little mouse!”

“I’m not a mouse, I’m the pirate king,” Amy said, stomping into the kitchen with her pirate boots already on. Ethan trailed behind her, his puppy ears affixed to his head but his makeup not done yet.

“Are you ready to go too?” Lucy asked their son.

“Ruff!” was Ethan’s response.

“I’m gonna fucking die,” Wyatt said, entering with—oh, huh, he had the Halloween candy, no wonder Flynn couldn’t find it. “They’re too fuckin’ cute.”

“I’m not cute, I’m the king!” Amy protested. “Daddy, don’t say I’m cute!”

“Apologies, your majesty,” Wyatt said solemnly. Flynn bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to stifle his laugh. “Of course you’re not cute, you’re very imperious.”

“What’s imperious mean?”

“Frightening but in a kingly kind of way.”

“Yessssss.” Amy let Lucy put her coat on. “I’m gonna get so much candy!”

“A hyperactive nine-year-old,” Wyatt mumbled. “Just what we’re gonna love dealing with at ten at night.”

Flynn kissed him, and tasted peanut butter. “Sneaking Reese’s?” he murmured.

“Says the man who tastes like Skittles.”

“Fair play.”

“Okay, okay, let me do Ethan’s makeup and we’ll get pictures!” Lucy said.

Ethan and Amy groaned dramatically. “Why?” Ethan asked.

“Because your fathers look very handsome and they’ll only let me take a picture if you’re in it,” Lucy replied.

That seemed to be all right with the kids. Lucy put white and black makeup on Ethan’s face to fully puppify him, and then they all gathered for the photo. The three of them had thought about doing a three-way costume, but it was difficult to find something that worked for all of them, and Wyatt was going to be at home the whole time anyway. Instead, Lucy and Flynn had gone with Morticia and Gomez Addams, and Wyatt had opted for Peter Quill because he figured a friendly face would help the smaller kids who were scared by the decorations and also Flynn had once sarcastically told him he “sure was _mature_ enough to be Peter.”

Flynn would never, ever tell him that he looked cute as fuck in that leather jacket and with his tiny little Groot sticking out of his pocket.

Pictures taken, the kids were squirming with impatience. Flynn double-checked that the cameras worked (they did) and that Wyatt knew how to find and hit the silent alarm (he did) and that the kids’ GPS trackers were on (they were).

“What the hell are we going to tell the neighbors if they ever find out about shit like this?” Wyatt asked as the four of them bid goodbye before hitting the neighborhood (or, in Amy’s case, “pirating the neighborhood, avast!”).

“That we’re spies,” Lucy replied simply. “Do me a favor, sweetheart, and try not to start too many rumors about who’s cheating on whom while we’re gone?”

“It’s not _my_ fault they decided I’m the single one!” Wyatt protested. “ _You’re_ the one who nearly got into a fistfight with whatshername when she tried to flirt with me!”

“Just be good,” Lucy responded, and then she was taking their kids by the hands and leading them down the street.

Flynn surreptitiously snapped a picture of the three of them walking hand-in-hand, a dopey grin on his face. “You heard her,” he told Wyatt. “Be good.”

“I’m always good,” Wyatt retorted.

“Sure you are.”

“ _Tata_!” Amy shouted. “I can’t _pirate_ without my _first mate_!”

“Coming, Pirate King!” Flynn yelled. “She’s gonna be a holy terror when she’s older.”

“You say that like she’s not a holy terror now,” Wyatt replied. “Go, catch up, I’ll see you guys in a couple hours.”

Flynn kissed him softly and then hurried after the rest of his family, scooping Amy up and making her shriek and giggle. Lucy smiled at him, that same warm, adoring smile that he still couldn’t believe he’d earned, as Ethan barked at other people who walked by and tried to wag his tail.

It was going to be okay, he told himself. It was going to be a fun night.

It was.


End file.
